We need to get rid of performance-related pay for teachers

What pisses me off about performance management and targets is that anything you do that isn’t one of your targets is seen as completely irrelevant to any performance management discussion.

I would imagine that applies to everyone who has targets to meet. It's certainly not unique to teachers nor even the public sector generally.

When you say closes the gap between ability and aspiration this in itself can be the very flaw!

There are quite a clutch of students out there for whom the problem is little to no aspiration, for a whole host of reasons (and vice versa students who aspire but can't access the curriculum effectively to achieve inflated target grades). We can work hard on teaching them, but if they can't be motivated there really is an uphill battle. As established , I work in a school with no PRP and yet I hear teachers bemoan students for 'stuffing up their data'. I can only imagine what those conversations are like in schools with PRP.

I agree. Personally I think the application of the corporate
Model for public services like education and health is fundamentally flawed and inappropriate

agree that performance is best measured on how the professional ‘ ‘closes the gap’ between ability and aspiration rather than the brutal, from all sides, of ‘driving up standards’, suggesting we’re all (children and adults) winging it.

Performance related pay implies that a teacher's only job is to get academic results . In reality 1) no one can get your exam results for you, it's down to the pupils own motivation 2) teachers do much more for children: emotional and mental support, safeguarding - is that not of value?

There possibly is a an audit but, as there is no consistency across schools in the implementation - or not - of PRP it probably doesn't mean much.

Indeed, when it was first introduced the government said the anticipation was that the vast majority of teachers would progress, free of needless bureaucracy, through the system. They did, of course, hint that it could be quite a money saving wheeze...

This is almost exactly what HE establishments said but ucu, and the support staff unions really tried hard to nail the details. We knew that "nicely, nicely"could easily turn into "no way José" depending on future events, politics, society or management.

I do agree that your unions don't do enough to inform the public of issues in education in a positive way.

Is there an audit of the characteristics of teachers who do and don't get their increment? I mean as in sex or ethnicity, protected characteristics?

Anyway, thanks for letting me join in, I'll keep quiet now

That's the way it's being used in the school where I am on the pay committee but I can see it is open to 'misinterpretation'.

sunset, that is the way it should work. However, that is not the way it is being used in practice.

Indeed, when it was first introduced the government said the anticipation was that the vast majority of teachers would progress, free of needless bureaucracy, through the system. They did, of course, hint that it could be quite a money saving wheeze...

My training on PRP emphasised that a teacher can still progress up they payscale even if they don't meet numerical targets (ie aspirational percentages of children achieving whatever level/grade/progress) as long as they have shown via their evidence throughout the year that they have taken the right steps or course of action to try to achieve it and if they have fulfilled all the teaching standards for their level of experience.

Isabella I think sweet!

A target should only ever be for one class ; in fact I was encouraged this year to make it about a sub group of one class! ( I didn't)

Lots of our classes are split, too. I feel your pain.

piggy, I totally agree that prp is a bad idea for this exact reason. I understand that physics teachers are hard to find and, actually, I am pretty good at my job. But my colleague's job is at least as important (she teaches English) and it seems massively unfair to withhold pay progression based on factors which even the head and governors admit were beyond her control.

I fundamentally disagree with prp from M1 - M6. At higher levels I can see that you might need to be doing something extra to earn more money, but for people on the bottom end of the pay scale the job really isn't worth doing if you aren't going to move up.

IIRC the strikes about PRP and conditions came at a a very similar time to strikes about the change to the teachers' pension scheme. The public were not very supportive - why should teachers get a final salary scheme when no-one else does any more?

The unions didn't do a particularly good job of mobilising teachers to take part in industrial action, and informing the public of the issues. It doesn't help that there are many schools like mine where there are no reps for any unions at all.

Oh I see, thanks Noble, sorry to miss something so fundamentally important to education I had a LOT of stuff going on!

How did this get past the unions in the first place?

I had a quick Google and it looks as if performance related pay for teachers came in around 2013 which is perhaps why it wasn't on my radar at the time, I had no school age children. Weren't there strikes?

Performance related pay was mooted for HE support staff 10 years earlier than this. The unions didn't manage to get rid of it completely, but managed it to a large extent. I suppose it's different unions and a different time but I am still surprised.

Piggy, were you talking about me or Isabella?

If it was me then the target was for four classes - two year 11s and two year 13s. All of thise classes were shared - the year 11s three-way (specialist science teachers), and the year 13s two-way. I didn't teach one of the year 13 classes in year 12 at all, so only actually taught them 25% of the course.

In my 13 years of teaching I have only ever taught two exam classes (GCSE Chemistry) that I have been the sole teacher for. All my other classes have been shared.

Isabella that first target of yours is not one target!

If it is base on all you exam classes that could be loads of classes ( or in my case this year , one , shared)

I am shocked at all these PM meetings in PPA and after school.

You lot need your unions!

Haven't kissed my head yet. Am a bit worried now as he is retiring..

Isabella that issue is exactly the one that I talked about upthread. Last year our head of physics (on M3) didn't meet his exam targets (by a mile). He wasn't worried about pay progression - his attitude was 'they wouldn't dare deny me it, or I'll leave'. Sure enough, he got it. The head of drama didn't.

Last year I had three targets:

• One was pupil attainment. Basically, all exam classes exceed minimum FFT target on average (achieved). A level achieve ALPS 4 (not achieved).

• One was classroom. Mine was about creating a pack of resources for more challenging quantitative A level questions (not achieved).

• One should be 'whole school' based and all members of teaching staff are expected to have some sort of whole school activity that, once upon a time, would only have been in UPS territory. Mine was creating scheme of work and accompanying CPD for non-specialists to deliver GCSE (achieved).

Targets are set in October, there is a mid-year review in February and the full year is reviewed in September. It's all done after school or during PPA. There's also two lesson orbs per year and three 'official' book scrutinise on top of 'learning walks' and 'drop ins'.

My year was b*ggered up by the fact that my HOD left midway through the year leaving a pile and a half of unfinished projects. I ended up having to write his allocation of GCSE schemes of work as well as mentoring the PGCE student.

Doesn't all seem worth it for M6. I also have line management responsibility for a curriculum support assistant and have to do his performance management as well.